Andrew Alloway was born and raised in Edmonton, Canada. He graduated from the University of Alberta with a Computer Science degree.

Working at Nuna Logistics Limited, he supported northern mining sites in its unique and challenging IT environment. In 2012, some of his projects and work was featured in the Winter 2012 edition of Aptitude Magazine in an article entitled Building the road to streamlined license agreements.

He is a supporter of open source technology and products including Ubuntu, ICTFax, Apache, Drupal, Piler, and various other projects.

He has designed and implemented projects including Exchange migrations, Lync deployments, System Center Configuration Manager, and various other VMware products.

In 2013, Andrew attained his VMware Certified Professional 5 Data Center Virtualization certification.

Luigi Danakos has been in the technology industry for 11 years. He likes helping people understand technology. He is currently the CEO for Blurt Media Group, a technical and social media consultation firm. When not playing with technology, Luigi enjoys spending his time with his family, inspiring his kids to do what they love, by doing what he loves.

Joe Jessen currently works at Dell, but as a veteran in the IT industry, has held roles in private corporations, technology vendors, and consulting organizations. Joe has been involved with application and desktop delivery since 1996, setting the strategic direction for global organizations with their end user computing initiatives. With a focus on virtualization, Joe has also been an Industry Analyst in the end user computing and desktop virtualization space for The Virtualization Practice (www.virtualizationpractice.com) and Solutions 101, LLC (www.solutions101.us). Joe was also a technical reviewer for the book VMware Horizon View 5.3 Design Patterns and Best Practices, Packt Publishing. You can follow him on Twitter @JoeJessen or connect with him on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/pub/joe-jessen/0/666/336/.

Ryan Johnson is a staff technical account manager working for VMware as a part of Professional Services. He has over 18 years of enterprise experience ranging from engineering, research and development, enterprise technology and business architecture, service management, and professional services.

Prior to joining VMware, he was the Enterprise Technology Architect for Citizens Property Insurance Corporation of Florida where he led the enterprise architecture program and was responsible for the aspects of technology, applications, and information architecture.

He holds numerous industry certifications from VMware, Microsoft, EMC, Red Hat, and others.

For a mix of hypertext fragments, pixels, and all things under-analyzed, follow him on Twitter @tenthirtyam or on LinkedIn (linkedin.com/in/tenthirtyam).

Lauren Malhoit has been in the IT field for over 10 years and has acquired several data center certifications. She's currently a technical virtualization architect specializing in virtualization and storage in the data center. She has been writing for a few years for TechRepublic, TechRepublic Pro, and VirtualizationSoftware.com. As a Cisco Champion, EMC Elect, VMware vExpert, and PernixPro, Lauren stays involved in the community. She also hosts a bi-weekly technology podcast called AdaptingIT (http://www.adaptingit.com/). Lauren has been a delegate for Tech Field Day several times as well. She has authored vCenter Operations Manager Essentials, Packt Publishing, and was also a technical reviewer for OpenStack Cloud Computing Cookbook - Second Edition, Packt Publishing.

Mario Russo has worked as an IT Architect, a Senior Technical VMware Trainer, and in the pre-sales department. He has also worked on VMware Technology since 2004.

In 2005, he worked for IBM on the First Large Project Consolidation for Telecom Italia on the Virtual VMware Esx 2.5.1 platform in Italy with the Physical to Virtual (P2V) tool.

In 2007, he conducted a drafting course and training for BancoPosta, Italy, and project disaster and recovery (DR Open) for IBM and EMC.

In 2008, he worked for the Project Speed Up Consolidation BNP and the migration P2V on VI3 infrastructure at BNP Cardif Insurance.

He is a VCI Certified Instructor 2s Level of VMware and is certified in VCAP5-DCA.

He is the owner of Business to Virtual, which specializes in virtualization solutions.

He was also the technical reviewer of the books Implementing VMware Horizon View 5.2, Implementing VMware vCenter Server, Troubleshooting vSphere Storage, and VMware Horizon View 5.3 Design Patterns and Best Practices, all by Packt Publishing.

Maarten Vekens is a 33 year old freelance system administrator. He is certified in VMware Certified Associate and Data Center Virtualization. He is currently living in Brussels, Belgium.

He is an amateur cyclist who travels around the world and enjoys the cultural life.

He started his IT career 15 years ago at one of the biggest Petrochemical companies in the world. After some other project, he was asked to join the IT staff at Belga News Agency. While on this project, he started to work with VMware.

In 2012, he started his own company, Takeitoff (www.takeitoff.be), together with his best friend Vincent Oomen. They offer services to the European Commission and the Thomas Cook Airlines. The main focus stays on system administration and program management.